Stone, brick and tools.

It’s not all confit and ham at Camont. The beautiful tables laden with great food, the bustling markets of over flowing tables of local food, the smiling mustachioed face of friendly farmers selling and teaching their wares are a part of my life. A big part. But sometimes it is just hard labor of the non-virtual kind.

This will be a bigger window for the Loft apartment.

Today I am inside, warm by the fire, and writing a book on charcuterie. But outside in the clear but cold winter day, the team of masons and builders are working at turning my ‘funny idea’ into a reality. We are all apart of the team. The Architect, the Builder and the Men. Me? I’m the Lady. I think they add Crazy in front of that.  I look at magazines and websites and beautiful images of finished spaces, but what I actually am thinking, are we putting enough plugs, ceiling lights, wifi access, plumbing, windows? More, more, MORE!

electric conduit hidden behind the new brick walls.

The Men are very nice; they come from Poland to work in France, legally. While they be living and working in France, they are insulating the barn for Polish weather- double walled and triple glazed windows. We will be warm next year and I will make Polish sausage in this space to honor them. Working from the Architect’s good plan, we make changes daily. Flexibility is important for me; the future use of the barn hangs in the air. I am shocked at how fast the walls are going up, straight, strong and insulated. They are working with the same basic materials these barns were built 300 years ago- cut stone, rubble, and I Can barely keep up.

In the future, when Tim Clinch takes wonderful interiors that some style magazine or lifestyle website will use, they won’t know what went on or did what or how the walls leaned in dangerously on one side and leaned out even more on the other. They won’t know that the roof  beams were drilled with insect holes and rot. They won;t know that the floor was 300 eyars of cow manure and straw. But I will. And I will know, too, that I hid a little time capsule of memories of Camont from it’s first three hundred years: a copy of my book, a photograph of old Monsieur Dupuy, a letter to the next owners… What else should I include?